When you write, when you paint, when you play music, when you design, create, tell stories...or just daydream, what is your inspiration?
An oft asked question during an author interview is, "Who was/is your inspiration?" And the answers are as different as the authors answering. Yet, there seems to be a common thread running though the replies. If the author writes scifi, the answer is generally a well-establsihed scifi author, or a scifi movie or TV series. If the author writes romance, then the inspiration is usually a romance writer, a movie--or a romantic person in the real world.
For me, with my strange shape-shifting genre...I would have to say, Carl Sagan, Ray Bradbury, CJ Cherryh, Gene Roddenberry, George Lucas, Tolkien, the guys who wrote the 1960s television show "Lost in Space", and Charles Perrault.
Huh? Charles Perrault? Who is he and what is he doing on that list?
Well, your useless trivia for today is that Charles Perrault is the person most often credited with having written "Cinderella". Awe, go ahead and Google it. You will find dissension opined freely about who--among the over 3,000 version of Cinderella, was THE author. I am satisfied with Perrault.
But, who wrote it isn't the point. That the author of a romantic fairytale is on that list, is.
I have read a lot in my lifetime, watched movies, been inspired by real life people and events, but when it came time to set ink to paper, it was fantasy/scifi/romance that poured onto the pages. My genre(s) chose me.
I suspect--but have no proof, that our inspiration as writers is seeded deeply within us at an early age. The child who grew up reading Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys, is more inspired to write mysteries. The kids who wanted to be cowboys,and grew up reading Zane Gray, lean a bit toward western in their writing-even if it is scifi. Or, the child who was fascinated with crime reporting on television and newspaper, or watched detective series like Mannix, or Magnum P.I. ,grew up to write Crime Fiction.
It may not be a specific genre, like Nancy Drew lovers who write mystery--writing a plot (mystery) that they like over and over. But instead, might be like the Zane Gray fans who write a character type over and over, returning to the image of the cowboy, the loner, the hero, to whom they felt a kindred calling?
Maybe I am just full of crap and have way too much time to think? That's okay. If our opinions differ, it is a reassurance that the world is a big, wonderful place full of diversity.
So, back to why I write fantasy/scifi/romance:
I cried every year when I watched this. It was broadcast on network TV once a year from 1965 until 1974.
And then there was this one:
And this one:
*laughing* What a mixed up bunch of inspiration.
People have given me advice, "Write what you know." I thank them and smile, because I know that I write what I love.
What about you? Inspiration at a young age, relative to what you write now...
